1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a control arrangement designed for controlling radar transmissions for a system of antennas with mutually different broadside directions, disposed on a moving platform.
The invention furthermore relates to a method for allocating a radar transmission, requested for transmission within a future time window to an antenna from a system of antennas with mutually different broadside directions, disposed on a moving platform.
2. Discussion of the Background
Control arrangements of this type are in particular used for controlling radar transmissions for systems of phased array antenna faces, which collectively constitute a multi-surface phased array antenna system. The antennas may be used for both transmitting and reception purposes. The control arrangement is generally continuously supplied with requests generated by an external request generator for realizing a radar transmission within a certain future time window.
An example of an arrangement for controlling radar transmissions for a multi-face phased array radar system is known from the European patent application EP-A-0.440.200. The control arrangement disclosed in this patent contains a number of track computers which, by means of several PRT (Pulse Repetition Time) timing computers, request the generation of transmitter pulses. These requests are supplied to a scheduler which arranges the radar transmissions in time and, per radar transmission, assigns an antenna surface.
The drawback of this prior art control arrangement is its unsatisfactory performance in case the antenna system is mounted on a moving platform, for instance on a ship, and a radar transmission is requested for transmission at a moment or time window that is so far in the future that the ship's motion come into play. In the meantime, the transmit direction of the requested radar transmission with respect to a selected antenna face may have changed in an adverse sense owing to the ship's roll, pitch and yaw, which makes it expedient to allocate the requested radar transmission to another antenna face whose position with respect to the transmit direction of the radar transmission is more favourable.